Due to lack of time and hardware issues, the Manjaro team has decided to shut down the manjaro32 project that started in 2017.
The team behind Manjaro Linux announced this week that the “manjaro32” project, and with it the 32-bit version of the Linux distribution, will finally be discontinued.
The announcement may seem like a déjà vu to some, since developers wanted to pull the plug on 32-bit support for x86 PCs before, back in 2017. At that time, they justified their decision with the decreasing popularity among users and developers. However, resistance developed in parts of the community, so that the “manjaro32” variant was launched in the same year. Unlike the main project, this was no longer based on Arch Linux, for which official 32-bit support was also discontinued, but on the community-driven continuation Arch Linux 32.
Lack of time and hardware errors
But that’s over now: The website of the manjaro32 project states that a lack of time and a hardware defect make further development of manjaro32 impossible.
“manjaro32 has ceased due to a lack of time and a hardware failure” is also the title of the corresponding post in the Manjaro forum. Manjaro developer Jonathon Fernyhough, who took responsibility for manjaro32, managed to continue the project longer than he ever expected. In addition, it is actually not that easy to get hold of x86 hardware: the 64-bit successor architecture x86_64 has meanwhile replaced the 32-bit CPUs across the board.
32-bit: selection of distributions is getting smaller
With the demise of manjaro32, the selection of Linux distributions for users of 32-bit systems has continued to shrink: after Canonical recently removed support for the classic x86 architecture from Ubuntu 20.04 and is therefore also missing in Mint Linux 20, the end of support in Manjaro is another blow for users of old systems with 32-bit Intel CPUs.
But still have it Users of older systems have a certain choice: The Manjaro project has a list of Linux distributions with 32-bit support in its own forum.
